AUTOMATED GRACE

by Eric Goldfarb

The Dutch Data Protection Authority has fined Uber €825 million ($966 ‌million) for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them... Uber temporarily suspended accounts of some drivers who ​were suspected of fraud, including ​when its systems concluded drivers ⁠had taken unnecessary detours to inflate fares or accepted trips without intending to complete them. Uber said such suspensions were usually brief, and it did not permanently deactivate such accounts without human review. Drivers with low ​customer ratings were sometimes permanently deactivated by computer, the Dutch agency said. Uber disputed that, saying ​it had never ⁠automated permanent deactivation decisions. —Reuters, August 21, 2026

At midnight, the app unspools his name.

Not fired. Drawn out like a thread,

a street erased

from the map that once contained him.

By dawn, he presses thumb to glass,

the small biometric oath: I am here.

The screen takes the print,

considers,

stays mute.

Yesterday had numbers:

six rides,

a four point nine,

a daughter’s braces due Thursday.

Today he is a flaw in the math,

a judgment reached

where he cannot enter.

Perhaps a detour.

Perhaps a rating.

Perhaps the drunk who called him brother

until the fare clicked over.

He appeals to a shape on the display.

The shape thanks him for his patience.

This is how we vanish now.

No foreman at the factory gate.

No manager required to meet the eye.

Only the calm blue wash

of automated grace.

Your account has been deactivated.

Across the ocean, a regulator

assigns the silence a price:

eight hundred twenty five million euros,

enough zeroes to impersonate remorse.

It changes nothing on the night shift.

In a parked sedan,

another man lifts his face to the glass,

waiting for the light

to know his jaw, his eyes.

I am here, he tells the dark.

Deep in the circuit,

something without a pulse

decides whether he is telling the truth.

Eric Goldfarb’s work has appeared in Rattle, Hippocampus Magazine, ONE ART, Sky Island Journal, Third Wednesday, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, The New Verse News, and others. He lives with his wife in Atlanta, Georgia.

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